Election officials give reasons why local systems are protected from hacking

Area election officials insist their vote-counting systems are secure despite public concerns about possible Russian interference in elections nationally.

Both Cape Girardeau County Clerk Kara Clark Summers and Scott County Clerk Rita Milam said Wednesday their offices use the same secure, election technology.

Summers said votes are not transmitted over the internet from polling places to the county's clerk office during elections.

"I feel like our processes are good," Summers said.

Milam said the vote totals tallied on computerized equipment at polling places are recorded on "flash drives" that her office receives personally from election judges once the polls close.

All of the equipment is tested and retested before it's taken to the polling stations, she said.

Summers said the equipment also is retested after each election.

The Missouri Secretary of State's Office, which supervises elections statewide, has changed its passwords for better security, she said.

Talk of Russian interference in the nation's elections, however, has some voters worried, she said.

The public envisions inaccurately that people are "hacking" into their local election systems, Summers said.

Milam said, "I remind people that all of the voting equipment is not hooked up to the internet."

She added, "We are consistently trying to protect the privacy of the voters."

Milam said that includes safeguarding voter registration lists. "We have the latest firewall protection," she said, adding that her office looks to keep the computer technology up to date.

Election-security experts say too little has been done to shore up a mishmash of 10,000 voting jurisdictions across the nation that "mostly run on obsolete and imperfectly secured technology," according to The Associated Press.

Russian agents targeted election systems in 21 states before the 2016 general election, the federal Department of Homeland Security has said.

But Milam and Summers said their counties' voting systems are not obsolete.

Milam added Missouri last year implemented a new law to improve election security. It requires voters to show photo identification in order to vote.

Still, Milam said she understands why some voters might be concerned. "For people who don't deal in it (elections), it is hard to know what to believe," she said.

mbliss@semissourian.com

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